> Note: SUSE is the biggest German Linux company. (Source: I worked for them until last year.) KDE is a German project. SUSE developers did a lot of the work on KDE.
> So, when SUSE signed up, KDE was safe.
> Red Hat and Ubuntu refused to sign.
> So, both needed non Windows like desktops, ASAP, without a Start menu, without a taskbar, without a window menu at top left and minimize/maximize/close at top right, and so on.
I remember Unity was born because GNOME (Red Hat) wouldn't accept Canonical changes. I remember GNOME 3 was born like a long term project that could adapt better for the future (nascent adaptive UI's) just like KDE4. It was known to be slow in its first iterations to get better over time.
Of course, if the described reasons really make sense, it is not something that would be discussed in the open, but is not what I felt at the time. I even vaguely remember the "genie" effect in Compiz needed two curves when minimizing a window to be "different enough" from apple, but that was all. I also remember you couldn't play a DVD or an MP3 out of the box because of DRM and patents. Everything else... never had the vision the author described.
Disclaimer: around 2010-2013 I was a sporadic contributor to Compiz and GNOME.
At the time, both Novell/SUSE and Red Hat were significant contributors to GNOME. Novell acquired Ximian around the same time they bought SUSE and merged the two. That effectively made SUSE into a GNOME shop rather than a KDE one, though it didn't last as SUSE bled out all of their GNOME developers...
> SUSE signed a patent-sharing deal: https://www.theregister.com/2006/11/03/microsoft_novell_suse...
> Note: SUSE is the biggest German Linux company. (Source: I worked for them until last year.) KDE is a German project. SUSE developers did a lot of the work on KDE.
> So, when SUSE signed up, KDE was safe.
> Red Hat and Ubuntu refused to sign.
> So, both needed non Windows like desktops, ASAP, without a Start menu, without a taskbar, without a window menu at top left and minimize/maximize/close at top right, and so on.
I remember Unity was born because GNOME (Red Hat) wouldn't accept Canonical changes. I remember GNOME 3 was born like a long term project that could adapt better for the future (nascent adaptive UI's) just like KDE4. It was known to be slow in its first iterations to get better over time.
Of course, if the described reasons really make sense, it is not something that would be discussed in the open, but is not what I felt at the time. I even vaguely remember the "genie" effect in Compiz needed two curves when minimizing a window to be "different enough" from apple, but that was all. I also remember you couldn't play a DVD or an MP3 out of the box because of DRM and patents. Everything else... never had the vision the author described.
Disclaimer: around 2010-2013 I was a sporadic contributor to Compiz and GNOME.